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YONG Discussion Message Unwarrantedly Censored By Yahoo Finance 9 comments
Below is the exact and complete content of a message that I attempted to post on the Yahoo Finance NIV message board. Yahoo blocked this message from posting (i.e., censored it) each and every time that I attempted to post it. This was true even after I removed the text that I have, now, italicized within the message. I wrote Yahoo twice about unwarrantedly censoring this message. Less two very minor grammatical corrections that I made (i.e., the addition of a missing “)” and removing an “a” between “have” and “Bachelors”), below the censored message are the exact and complete correspondences between Yahoo and me. For those of you who know me from the Yahoo Finance message boards for NIV, YONG, and HRBN, please be aware that, if I suddenly stop participating on these message boards, it is because Yahoo terminated my account in a further act of unwarranted censorship. Also, if you wish to comment on or discuss this situation, we should do it via this vehicle, and not via Yahoo Finance. Based upon some research I have done, it appears that Yahoo may delete some or all of the messages pertaining to this topic; and I don't want anyone else to have difficulties with Yahoo based upon this specific situation.
Censored message:
"In important ways, YONG’s use of fulvic acid is newer. Fulvic acid has been in use in China and some other countries for hundreds of years; but not, to the extent I can determine, for agriculture. In terms of agriculture, there are research studies going back to at least the 1980’s. In terms of the plant product (which currently represents over 90% of revenues), it doesn’t really matter anyway. China has, to a large extent, duplicated the mistake that the U.S. and some other countries made. They relied on non-organic and/or N-P-K fertilizers and, in so doing, made the food being produced less-and-less nutritious over the years, et cetera. The U.S. ended up doing this very heavily because the U.S. is very big-money-driven, versus a true democracy. It’s a much longer story; but our companies don’t care if the people are malnourished, as long as they are making plenty of money off of the products they are selling, and our government is too disingenuous to do much about it. (The vitamin and mineral supplements that most people take fall far short of addressing the problem, and this is just a way in which our companies can make even more money without doing much public good.)
I may have digressed some in the paragraph above; but the point is that YONG, and other companies that are producing products enabling China to reverse this situation, are emblematic of what should be a new era. Also, previously, fulvic acid products for agriculture were plagued by quality and misapplication issues. Many companies are still producing poor quality products and giving bad advice regarding application amounts, et cetera. YONG, and some other companies, are bucking this trend; and their sales do, and will continue to, reflect this.
I don’t trust the ability of many companies with high margins to maintain them; but I do trust YONG’s ability to maintain its margins for years to come – and, in fact, grow them. Why? The coal mine and distribution rights purchases they made recently will each give them a significant amount of margin improvement, and they have barely tapped the domestic market available to them. They have almost certainly already smacked up against numerous competitors; but almost entirely, if not entirely, their competitors’ products and marketing (including assistance to farmers) aren’t as good.
If no one else on this message board is interested in YONG, it is O.K. with me, of course. I have just been engaging in a good conversation about it with y’all. If someone else is interested, you may want to go to the YONG message board and see the messages I posted earlier today under Technical Viability Of YONG’s Products."
Correspondence from me to Yahoo:
"The URL involved is http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_Z%29/Stocks_N/messagesview?bn=93315.
This is, simply, the NIV message board. I can post messages on this
board, but I cannot post the message below. Also, the blocking of this
message followed an unnatural pattern. (This is the easiest way I can
say it. It means, for instance, that it did not follow the pattern it
follows when you accidently type a curse word within the text, or the
like.) You need to either allow me to post this message or give me a
true and good reason why it was blocked. If you do not, I will not
simply sit on my hands. The message is as follows; and, in a country
that supposedly has free speech, there is nothing wrong with it."
Response from Yahoo:
"Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Message Boards.
We have completed our evaluation of your abuse report in accordance with
our Terms of Service, and because of our privacy guidelines, we do not
disclose what, if any, action which may have been taken on a user's
account.
We can tell you that we may, in appropriate circumstances and at our
sole discretion, terminate or take other action on accounts of users who
may have violated our Terms of Service.
You can review the Yahoo! Terms of Service here:
http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/utos-173.html
Thank you for taking the time to report abuse on Yahoo!.
Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Message Boards."
My response to Yahoo:
"This is rather important, so I am going to give you one more chance to get this right.
I have Bachelors and Masters degrees in Communication, and I have reviewed your terms of service. The message I attempted to post does not violate your terms of service. You have, simply, violated my right to free speech. Moreover, everything I attempted to post is, actually, inarguable fact. It is all so well supported by legitimate statistics, government documents, and other information that there is, actually, not another valid perspective. The issue is that people have had, and continue to have, inadequate unbiased access to this information.
Regardless of the above, it is not your place to make any judgment on matters such as these. I did not curse; I did not attempt to sell goods or services via your message board (as I have seen some others do); and I did not attempt to incite violence.
It is extremely important that you do not block messages such as mine. Although you probably do not recognize it, the quality of our (United States) government, companies, and people have badly deteriorated in recent decades - to the point where we are relatively good at very little. The only way that we can address this issue is by first recognizing our flaws in earnest and entirety. Without doing this, we cannot begin to better ourselves.
I strongly advise you to not respond to this email with a canned response. You should be certain to involve management, at an adequately high level, prior to giving a final response. I expect you, as I should, to respond to me within 24 hours; but, if you need more time to determine your final response as an organization, I understand. Just don't take too long."
Yahoo's response to me:
"Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Message Boards.
Yahoo! takes pride in the fact that our communities are an interesting
place to interact, share, learn, and grow. In keeping with this spirit
of community, we may periodically review posted content and remove posts
that violate our Terms of Service (TOS).
Please review the TOS to ensure that your posts are within our community
conduct guidelines. The TOS can be found at:
http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/utos-173.html
Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Message Boards."
Disclosure: Long NIV, YONG, HRBN
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This post has 9 comments:
The offending piece is offered below...
Investing has been, and always will be, about measuring value against price in relation to risk and possible reward. While the banks did suffer a massive decline it is unfair to blame the Federal Reserve for a lack of regulation, because the run on the banks was caused by the illicit, imprudent, and dare I say borderline illegal activities of shadow banking institutions such as citigroup.
The reason the FED is not to blame is simple. The FED's domain is the banking institutions, and its primary role is the "lender of last resort". However, investment banking firms like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Citigroup (also known as shadow banking institutions) are under the regulation of the S.E.C. and not the federal reserve. Thus, it was the failure of the S.E.C. to regulate these institutions and to so brazenly disregard their post—so much so as to allow an insurance giant like AIG to become a multi-billion dollar hedge fund—that required the FED to step in and rectify the situation.
According to the Federal reserve, their official buy price of Citigroup was $3.25 a share, and considering that it is now trading at $3.97 they actually stand to make a profit off of this support. Thus, in turn, the American people stand to make a profit off of their tax dollars via the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). This is only one case in many where the government is turning a profit from the bailout money. Most of the major banks actually made good with their payments of interest and principle, or are planning to do so soon. The major setbacks of the tarp plan were actually General Motors, AIG, Fannie May, and Freddie Mac.
The point here is that the 700 billion dollar TARP plan that everyone is blaming the federal reserve and President Obama for—this number actually tops a trillion dollars with all the emergency funding required of the fed before the bill was passed—WAS NECESSARY, and is why we are currently hovering under 10% unemployment, instead of in the middle to high 25th percentile. Furthermore, that trillion dollars that we are complaining about paying back is estimated, after profit and return of principle, to only be a net 26 billion dollar loss.
While I understand 26 billion dollars is nothing to scoff at, I believe it is a fair sum to stave off deflation and economic depression; And, furthermore, it is a sum which is within the limitations of our government to pay off in the next few years. If anything I applaud the extraordinary measures that Bernanke and associates did at the Federal Reserve. After any market mania—as was the housing bubble, and the internet bubble before it—I feel it is important that we take an inward look at ourselves, and our individual behaviors and actions, to find a way to stave off the repetition of history.
I am assuming that many of the posters on this board are, or have been, investors, and thus have a personal attachment to this particular issue. I am an investor as well, and seeing as I steered as far from the madness of the investment banks and the housing bubble as I possibly could, I feel personally stung by this incident. If you really want to prevent, or at least dampen the effect, of future events like this we must all act collectively when the next mania grips our hearts and our purse strings. Do not succumb to the easy money, made so fast as to question whether it simply materialized out of thin air.
It appears again and again we as humans must be reminded that there is no Philosopher's Stone, a quest that has led Kings and Clergy to disrepute and ruin. Instead, the next time you see something that makes you say to yourself, "Hey, this seems too good to be true!", walk away, and tell your friends to walk away, for it is the times that optimism and euphoria are at their highest when blackguards and rogues walk amongst honest men.
Having read your piece, I can tell you that you were censored due to your negative comments regarding Citigroup, et cetera, and/or the SEC. Yahoo has a history of censoring anti-corporate and/or anti-U.S.-government rhetoric.
As I do not need to tell you, you said nothing, and worded nothing in a manner, that warranted any sort of censorship. You were censored anyway – simply because Yahoo and others can get away with it and the censorship is consistent with their selfish agenda. Much longer story made very short, when you live in a country where everyone, or almost everyone, in political power is on the take via hefty campaign contributions, bribes (There is way more of this going on than is believed to be the case.), promises of a cushy, high-paying job if they are not reelected, et cetera, this sort of thing is going to happen – and it is not going to be properly-publicized, if publicized at all, when it does happen.
Your piece indicates that you are much more well-spoken and knowledgeable than is the norm. This puts you at greater risk of being censored – and harassed in other ways. We all have to make our own choices; but I hope that you can/will continue to speak freely and strive to circumvent the censorship, without too much risk to your future quality of life. Your words are, actually, more important than is the norm.
P.S., You may know some things that I don’t regarding this, but I think that the SEC deserves more-limited blame. The SEC was, and continues to be, very short-staffed. Also, the rules weren’t in place for some things, like derivatives, to be properly regulated. In support of your point though, some of the SEC staff had, it seems, been appointed or instructed to not enforce the rules that were in place because those in power at the time did not want these rules enforced.
They should not be allowed to conduct business in any country which allows freedom of speech.
Hey yahoo, censor this - Go straight to hell (after you go bk that is)...
From some quick research, it seems that some of your supporting facts above aren't stated as precisely as they ideally should be. For instance, it seems that Oxley headed the House Committee on Financial Services from 2001-2006 and Frank headed it from 2007-2010; and the Democrats had greater control of the House of Representatives from 2007-2010. This is worthy of mentioning here, but it does not necessarily make your conclusion incorrect. Also, and most importantly, it is not sufficient reason for censorship by Yahoo. Another message board participant can make these clarifications; and, then, you can reconsider and/or clarify the basis for your conclusion.
If you don't have a copy of your exact message that was censored, I encourage you to do the following in the future. For any longer messages, type your text into a Word document or the like and then copy the finished product into the Yahoo message board message. By saving the Word document periodically, you end up with a record of attempted text messages. As side benefits, you get spell checking and, if you accidently cursed or the like, you can make a relatively quick fix and resubmit the same message.
http://bit.ly/vnXCxH. Just plug in George Bush and American Home Owner into google and you can find plenty of these clips.
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